BitPay Signs 1,000 Merchants to Accept Bitcoin Payments

It may be getting easier to buy with Bitcoin. BitPay, an Orlando-based company that helps online merchants accept the digitized currency as payment, said Tuesday more than 1,000 merchants have signed up for its service in the past year. Merchants who have signed up for BitPay include GamerKeys, a seller of downloadable computer games; the 2012 campaign of Erik Olson, a libertarian candidate for Congress from North Dakota; and Whiskey Dicks bar in Orlando. About 60% of merchants who use BitPay's service are in the U.S., with another 25% in the U.K. and Europe. In all, merchants in about 98 countries process bitcoins via BitPay. "Businesses suddenly get it in terms of seeing the value proposition once they realize credit cards were never designed for the Internet," BitPay co-founder and chief executive Anthony Gallippi told American Banker. Bitcoin lets users move money inst...